Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!

Hello families of the Clubhouse!

Our Clubhouse has been a bit like Santa's workshop this last week and we've hardly had time to sit down - but here is a quick look at what we've been doing. Have a wonderful, joyful, restful holiday and we will see you in 2018!! Enjoy the outdoors and lots of reading and family time!

Mrs. Armour for us all.

Coloured coffee filters and our Amaryllis growth

Monday

We realized we only have 3 and a half days to finish up our Festive trees and poems so we started right into our word work after Mrs. Armour read the book Cold Snap. It had a lot of great describing words in it like ears tingled, frosty cheeks, and dangling icicle. We discussed nouns being things we can see and touch like ears, cheeks and icicles. Describing words, or adjectives are those words that show us instead of just telling us about the noun. We brainstormed nouns for Winter/Christmas words for taste, smell and feel and then worked on our "special sentences" for our Winter Poem.

Remind us to look for describing words in our stories that we read and listen to.

Today in gym we played ringette. Girls played on one side, boys on the other. We put benches in the middle so the ring didn’t go to the other side. Hockey has the blade on the stick and ringette only has a straight pole.

This afternoon we continued tracing our hands to make a paper tree. We are using our poems about winter and Christmas to make ornaments, like “I hear Santa’s bells on the roof” or “I smell hot chocolate.” We are working on using interesting words to describe the noun.

Green group is helping with blog this week. Our amaryllis plant grew 10cm over the weekend!! We think having a south facing window is a good thing for plants.

Tomorrow is Christmas/Festive Hat day and Library and Home reading

Predator or Prey Game

Fresh Air Friday - Food Chain

Today we started with centres and watched a short video on herbivores, omnivores and carnivores. Then we joined Room 1/2 to compare our amaryllis plants. They are both growing like crazy, but ours is a bit behind. Some of us are predicting that Room 1/2's plant will bloom next week! We left our amaryllis plant in the Room 1's south facing window, so hoping it will be a good growing weekend!

Together we brainstormed about what kind of animals live on Nose Hill and then discussed what herbivores, omnivores and carnivores need to eat to survive and which animals would be in which category. Then Mrs. Boyer, Mrs. Hamby and Mrs. Armour went over how to play the predator/prey game and handed out red, yellow and green pinnies. Ask us what colour we were and what we could "eat."

After indoor recess, we all went outside to play. The three teachers were "Mother Nature" and we had to look for the "food/water" (pennies) stations hidden in Whispering Woods. It was really fun. Some of us learned being an animal (especially a herbivore) is hard work! We learned that being "stealth" is really important in survival.

A couple more people achieved 6 stars and were able to choose something from the Star box. Our marble jar is almost full - we are shining stars!

We are still collecting things for "Fill a Sock" campaign until Wednesday - please check the school website for more details

Have a great weekend!

REMINDERS for next week:
Monday - Lego club at lunch
Tuesday - Festive Hat day 
Wednesday - Dress like an elf 
Thursday - Polar Express Day (wear your pjs) HALF DAY - done at noon

Hands into Trees...

Thursday

Today the grade one’s finished printing the letters of the alphabet, X and Z and we had a celebration clap!

In music we are working on rhythm, pitches and melody using our hands and voices.

We played hockey in the gym. Girls played on one side of the gym, boys on the other side. We used new hockey sticks and cones.

We wrote a letter to Mrs. Polski to ask her to come and listen to our survey results. Jared and Georgia delivered the letter but Mrs. Polski wasn’t available so we left it with Mrs. Rennie. We hope she will be available to come to the Clubhouse next week.

We are making our trees with our hands. We discovered if we fold the paper and cut out our hands it looks like a butterfly!

All three yellow group members are away so we all helped with the blog today!

Tomorrow we will be playing the game "Predator/Prey" in the Whispering Woods discovering the needs of plants and animals, herbivores and carnivores. Even though the weather has been unseasonably warm, please remind us to dress warm in layers with hats, coats, mitts and boots.

Wednesday

Today we started with our Festive centres and guided reading. Some of us made snowmen with buttons, yarn and carrot noses - very cute and fun!

In gym we practiced our "puck control" with floor hockey sticks moving the "soft puck" around the cones, with a goal at the end to try and score. We had teams of 3 or 4. 

We did a Wonder Word today with the letters A, A, Y, S, W, L. Can you guess what the word is that uses all the letters? A lot of us are guessing it and coming up with words before Mrs. Armour gives us clues now! We discussed how the letters "ay" can make a lot of words and also sound the same as "eigh" but there are only a few words that have the 4 letter A sound like neigh, weigh and eight!

Most of the grade ones have only two letters left to print! X and Z and then we will be done the whole alphabet. The grade twos are reading Winter and Christmas books and writing about the beginning, middle and end, or favorite part of the story.

We started making our Hand Pine/Christmas Trees today. Ask us how we are making them and what colour background we chose. 

Reminders: We are hoping to walk to Nose Hill for Fresh Air Friday, but we need at least 3 volunteers so we can be safe. If you are available please email Mrs. Armour or let the office know. Thank you!

Looking ahead to next week: Fun Festive Days - Tuesday 19th Wear a Festive Hat (Santa, reindeer, red or green) Wednesday 20th Dress like an Elf (red, green, white) Thursday 21st is a HALF DAY and Polar Express Day (wear your PJ's and come drink hot chocolate!)

Treat Tuesday

Thank you so much to all who brought treats to share with Dr. Coffin family today! I apologize if there was any confusion around bringing a treat for Treat Day and bringing a "taste of home" to share with our class and talk about how this food is important to your family. The timing was a little confusing! We are all enjoying the snacks whenever they come.

Today grade 1's continued working on printing. We are almost done the whole alphabet and are excited to move on to combing letters into families and more words. Did you know that the sentence,
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.  has all 26 letters of the alphabet? This is a great sentence to practice at home to see which letters are easy and which are tricky and need more work.

Grade 2's have been printing days of the week, months of the year and number words one to twenty. We have been trying to print them from memory and are doing well. We want to be able to write the date independently in our journals and writing. 

For math grade 2's are working with Ms. Boyer on the computers learning to how make a graph and discover how to read the data.
Grade 1's are taking our surveys and discovering who would like to have our information. What was the purpose of our questions? We are writing a letter to see if we can meet with the recess supervisors and let them know what we found out. We are also learning to read graphs and getting information from them. Today we read a graph about "favorite winter sports". Guess which one was the favorite?

Our new centres are festive for the next 2 weeks! We can create and write cards, make a snowman or do a Santa picture puzzle.

We are making decorations with coffee filters by coloring them with markers and then adding just a bit of water - they are looking quite beautiful!

We are also working on "stretching our sentences" to make super descriptive sense sentences about winter. "I see snow." becomes "I see glittery snow falling on a sparkly, friendly snowman."

Tuesday afternoons are a bit long without music, so we are scheduling some computer "Mathletics" time - this is time to work on our numbers and patterns. We might need some reminders that we can work on our avatars and "live mathletics" at home.

There is so much going on it is hard to sit down to write a blog and get our regular jobs done. Sorry we have missed a few days again.

Today was library and home reading. Thank you for reminding us to read with you every night and then sending our home reading back tomorrow.

We are looking forward to Music Wednesday and Thursday.

We are hoping to go to NOSE HILL for FRESH AIR FRIDAY. If you are available to volunteer - please send Mrs. Armour an email. We will be starting around 9 and plan to be back around 11:30-11:45.

Thank you!!

Here is a picture of the book we read today, along with a sample of our "colour match challenge".

Keep observing the colors all around you! Have a great weekend!

Thursday

Wow - it is the end of the week already! We are looking forward to FESTIVE EVENING tonight from 6-8pm to share fun time of music, crafts, food and visiting. We are excited to share our song Winter Fun! with everyone too.

Mrs. Armour was away on Wednesday, so Mr. Ogilvie came to teach us again. We worked hard practicing graphs with dice and tallying. Mr. O always has great ideas to help us learn!

Today we started hockey games during gym time. We will use soft "q-tip" sticks while we practice passing and controlling the ball so everyone can be a part and have fun.

We used all the things we know about colour today to "create a match" from a "paint chip" Mrs. Armour read us a book called, SKY COLOUR, which was about a girl who wanted to paint the sky blue, but there was no more blue paint. She wondered and wondered and watched the sky (two GREAT things to do as artists and scientists - wonder and observe!) and then figured out the sky can be many other colors besides blue! Then Mrs. Armour gave us each a paint chip and we had to try and mix the right colors to match it. It was fun to try and decide what colour to add and mix. Most of us tried 3 or 4 colors.

Next week we will finish our portraits and do another colour experiment.

Please remind us to read our HOME READING books and return on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday so we can get new ones.

Thank you to Colin and Lily for sharing food with us this week! Next week is GREEN group's turn. (Malik, Max and Lucas) Thank you for sharing a NUT FREE taste of something important to your family.

Reminder: PD day tomorrow for teachers only. HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!

Monday

Today we worked on Journals during Guided reading and after Gym. It is a good thing to talk about what we did on the weekend for some of us because that helps us remember. We are trying to write more and think about one topic with added details.

During Gym, we practiced all the things we have learned during basketball unit. We had 4 stations - dribbling high and low (control), chest pass against wall (focus passing and catching), shooting hoops (aim), and "boxing out" keeping our ball from opponents. Tomorrow we will play some mini games to practice all of these at once! We have all improved at controlling those basketballs!

After Lunch, Mrs. Armour showed us a brown paper bag that we are going to use for a book to show so many different things about ourselves. Our portraits will be the cover. Today we discussed what is important ABOUT us (things we can't change) like what we look like, where we were born, our family...and what is important TO us (things we like, our favorites) like our hobbies, pets, food, celebrations. We printed them and created "bubbles" around them and then glued them beside our practice portrait in our art journal. This will help remind us what we want to include in our book.

This week Orange group (Jared, Carmen and Madalynn) are helping with Blog, Red group is organizing shelves, Yellow group is responsible for the Book bins, Green group is recording our Amaryllis growth, Blue group is cleaning desks and Purple is cleaning floors at the end of the day.
Thank you for doing your jobs and helping keep our Clubhouse tidy!

We forgot to choose our "Share Category" on Friday, so Tessa threw the ball and it hit on FOOD. So...this month everyone can bring in something that is special to your family to share (nut free please and thank you! If your special food includes nuts - just share that with us - "usually this has nuts in it, but we left them out to share")
Because there is only 3 weeks in December, we will have one group sharing each week and then everyone can have a chance to bring something for our celebration on the 20th/21st.

Purple group (Georgia, Lily, Colin) can bring something to share this week. Thank you for sending something that is SPECIAL to your family. You just need to bring a "taste" for everyone. Be ready to SHARE why the food is important to your family.

TUESDAY IS LIBRARY

TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY home reading books.

THURSDAY is FESTIVE EVENING - thank you to those who have for returned your forms.

Fresh Air Friday - Searching for Animal Clues

On Friday we were Photographers, Cartographers (Maps), Statisticians (Tallying) searching for, keeping track and mapping where we found animal clues of their homes, their scat, their tracks and any fur/feathers/bones.

Winter Fun Song for Festive Evening - Please sing along!

Shining and Caring...

We are working towards a celebration party by "Shining and Caring" See our stars hanging in the classroom and how we can make our stars shine brighter! Once our stars are shining bright with 6 colour stars...time for a celebration! We will do a survey about what kind of snack to bring. We are hoping we can have this celebration on December 20th or 21st!

Amaryllis report, sharing songs and Lego challenge